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Henry David Thoreau's Walden Pond

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Walden Pond has never quite been the pristine, secluded wilderness Henry David Thoreau made it out to be in his book “Walden; or Life in the Woods.” The Fitchburg Railroad opened next to the pond the same month Thoreau moved in 1845 to the cabin in the woods owned by his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Frederic Tudor harvested ice on the pond for export throughout Thoreau’s two years there. After Thoreau left, Walden Pond briefly was the site of an amusement park, and in the 1930s, it sometimes drew tens of thousands of visitors in a single day.

Walden nonetheless instantly conjures idyllic images of solitude and natural beauty in the popular imagination. But a few more holes are undoubtedly poked in its legend thanks to S.B. Walker’s book,
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